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(meteorobs) H-B, Evening and Morning

Hi All
I guess we do have it good here in southern California.   I had the
opportunity, together with members of the SBAS, and faculty and students
from UCLA, to observe Hale Bopp both in the evening and morning.  We were at
our favorite site near Mojave where the viewing conditions were perfect.  No
clouds or haze, and the LM was in the high sixes.   

As darkness fell HB was about ten degrees above the distant mountains, but
due to its low elevation it didn't look very impressive.  Naked eye it was
just an elongated fuzzball.   Through my 15 x 80 binos the coma was a fuzzy
ball and the tail was difficult to separate into its elemenrts and appeared
only to be about two degrees long.

By 3:30 AM Hale Bopp was rising above the small pool of light caused by the
distant small town of Ridgecrest and it looked very different from it's
evening apparition with the coma shining brightly and the two tails plainly
visible to the naked eye.  

An hour later it had risen above the light pollution, and boy, what a sight!
The coma was a tick less bright than Vega, but its overall integrated
magnitude was estimated to be better than 0.3.   The ion tail was blue and
at least ten degrees long.   This became difficult to estimate with my binos
because they have a FOV of 3.5 degrees and after moving along the tail 2 x
FOV it filled the view and it became impossible to say exactly where it
ended.   The dust tail appeared to have split with a clear V of about 30
degrees between them.

As dawn began to invade the sky I tried my own personal experiment.   I
wanted to see where HB would be in order on the list of objects as they
disappeared from my view.   The last three naked eye objects turned out to
be HB, Vega and Jupiter.   I continued to observe HB through the binos
watching it become very small and feint.   Vega disappeared, and it was neck
and neck with HB (binos) and Jupiter (naked eye).   The tail on HB became
very interesting as it took on the form of an arc that appeared to originate
at, or travel round, the south side of the coma, and curve up and to the
left.   It was now very thin and much less than a degree long.   I continued
the watch of both Jupiter and HB until they both disappeared from my averted
vision at exactly 6:00 PM

Very interesting

Ron Rennie
Lomita, CA
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